Launching the Cultural Data Lab
Interested in experimenting with cultural heritage data?
Do you have ideas for activities such as organizing a service jam about cultural participation or producing for instance a podcast about foundlings in Ghent in the 18th century?
The Cultural Data Lab will be the place to be, launching in March 2021 (or when covid regulations allow it).
The Cultural Data Lab is a physical hub in De Krook library, forming a connection between the project partners as well as the cultural community. Currently, collection, data and technical contributors are location-wise quite dispersed. With this datalab, we want to enable collaborations in an open space for technology testing.
This space is not a mere co-working space for the project partners, but an event space hosting data. By organizing tech and citizen events we will open up the cultural heritage and stimulate experiment. The space can be used as well to co-create. It’s open for everyone who wants to experiment with cultural data. De Krook is ideal as a third place with a lot of passers-by (avg. 7000 per day).
Our aim is to make the Cultural Data Lab the central hub for digitized cultural heritage in Ghent. A space for everyone who wants te learn and experiment.
Next to the immersive and mobile CoGent-box and the Cultural Participation Toolkit, it is a fundamental part of the project as a whole. The former two tools are going to be employed in the neighbourhoods and will focus on citizens as the main target audience, while the Cultural Data Lab wants to unite businesses, research and government institutions as well as cultural professionals who are actively working in the field of culture, data and technology.
First we will analyze the needs of the heritage museums and institutions in Ghent concerning data. After that we will look for opportunities and solutions offered by businesses and researchers. And finally in 2022 we will launch several co-creative events, such as hackathons and design sprints to produce innovative solutions. In this process of co-creation and knowledge sharing we want to produce several prototypes and concepts.
“Opening up cultural data is one thing, but stimulating creatives to create new applications, ideas and products by re-using those data is what it is really about.”
We do not want to limit our experiments to cultural professionals in Ghent. We want to involve professionals in the whole of Flanders. Meemoo is an important partner in widening our audience reach. We are looking at the global Open GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums) community as well as possible partners.
Interested?
Then share your ideas with the Cultural Data Lab